Drought affects the Romanian economy

Drought has lately affected almost all regions of Romania and has caused Romanian farmers damage worth over two billion euros. The Danube river level has also dropped alarmingly, which makes traffic on the river very difficult

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Mihai Pelin, 13.08.2015, 13:59

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The drought that has been affecting Romania for almost two months now has caused much damage to Romanian farmers. The scorching days and the lack of precipitations led to a dwindling of the underground water reserve in most areas, which had serious consequences on the main crops. Corn crops are the most affected, the drought also damaging the soy, wheat, rape, sunflower and vegetable crops.

90% of the irrigation system in Romania is nonfunctional, and at present only 300 thousand hectares can be irrigated, against the 3.3 million hectares that used to be irrigated in 1989. Moreover, the wells of thousand of households have dried. Romanian farmers estimate losses to stand at over 2 billion euros, a sum that might further increase if temperatures remain high and if there is no precipitation.

An immediate consequence will be the increase in prices for fruit, vegetables and cereals, farmers warn. The drought has also affected traffic on the Danube River. The river flow has decreased alarmingly and navigation has been restricted. In Galati, in southeastern Romania, the river level has reached almost one meter, as compared to 3.5 meters, which is the regular depth for this time of the year, and sand islands have merged in the middle of waters, which raises the risk of accidents. Ship transporters are obliged to reduce speed especially in the critical areas.

Many shipping lanes have narrowed on certain segments, ships being obliged to wait in line to pass one at a time. The biggest problems are reported on the Zimnicea-Belene segment, which is administered by the Bulgarian authorities.

The director of the Galati-based Maritime Danube Ports Authority, Marius Luigi Giubrei, explains how the activity of transporters on the Danube River is affected: “The ships transporting freight from Constanta to Serbia, Austria and even to the north of Romania, are affected by the sudden drop of the Danube river flow. They can no longer load their ships at normal capacity, the weight of cargo being much smaller”.

Furthermore, deep draught ships have to transfer a part of the cargo on smaller ships, to be able to cross the areas with low water depth.

The south of Germany has been faced with similar problems as traffic on the Danube was blocked Wednesday after a Romanian cargo boat shipwrecked. Many ships are blocked on the entire course of the Danube, an important transport route for oil and cereals from the east to the west of Europe. The situation is not going to improve in the coming period, as weather forecasts show that the Danube river level will continue to drop for at least another week.